When it comes to payback, the mercurial Montreal mayor knows few limits

It takes all of 10 seconds of being in Denis Coderre’s company to realize the simplicity and effectiveness of his schtick.

First, the smile: broad, zany, it parts his cheeks to an almost absurd distance. Then, it’s a handshake, firm and protracted. He pulls you in close, says something about baseball or hockey or your wife and kids. Then comes the belly laugh, emerging from his chest as a puppy might from under the bed covers.

You are in his grip. You want to be his friend. More importantly, you want to vote for him.

Coderre’s success as a politician lies in that 10-second magic trick. It propelled him into federal politics, first as an MP, then as a cabinet minister, and finally as the Liberal Party of Canada’s ‘Quebec lieutenant’ — the odd-sounding title that essentially made Quebec his client state.

And it helped him navigate the Byzantine maze of competing powers and petty conflicts that is politics in Montreal, arguably the most difficult of big cities to govern. A typical Coderre fundraiser is a cacophony of French separatists, English blue bloods, Jews, Muslims, Haitians, suburbanites, business owners and young Liberal true believers. They have no natural reason to be in a room together. Yet there they are, eating out of Denis’ palm.

There is a flip side to this boisterous bonhomie, one which we’ve seen far more of in the last six months. This Coderre is paranoid, cynical, vindictive — and blessed with a bulletproof sense of entitlement.

In 2014, the Journal de Montréal revealed that Coderre had used a Montreal Police escort to get him and his wife to a Corey Hart concert. It was a brilliant little scoop that suggested Coderre’s carefully curated everyman image was just that: an image. The real Coderre needs a cop escort to cut through the hoi polloi, so that he may enjoy Sunglasses At Night unencumbered.

Coderre could have laughed it off. Certainly, a politician of his abilities could have defused it with a well placed joke on Twitter, Coderre’s bugle of choice for witticisms and self-promotion. Instead, he sicced the chief of police on the journalist in question, Felix Séguin, who found himself the subject of an investigation to see who was talking to him.

None of these scandals would have had any impact had the mayor tamed his instinct for petty revenge. But Coderre can’t help himself.

A few months after the Corey Hart debacle, another journalist made discreet inquiries about a rumour he’d heard. Coderre — so the tale went — neglected to pay a $444 ticket for failing to renew his car registration in 2012, when Coderre was still an MP. The journalist, Patrick Lagacé, couldn’t confirm the tale, and the story went exactly nowhere … and would have remained there, were it not for the vindictiveness of a certain mayor.

As a result of his inquiries, the Montreal Police got a warrant to obtain Lagacé’s phone records, in yet another attempt to flush out the source of the police leaks. What’s more, Coderre specifically denied that he’d leaned on the police chief at the time, Marc Parent, to do his bidding. The current police chief Philippe Pichet, who served under Parent, contradicted Coderre not 24 hours later.

More recently, Séguin struck again, unearthing a cheque Coderre had received from businessman Jean Rizzutto to help with Coderre’s legal battles against NHL winger Shane Doan. (Coderre, in a fit of pique, decided he had to defend Quebec’s honour in the face of Doan’s alleged Francophobia.) At the time, Coderre claimed he’d paid his own legal bills. Faced with the evidence five years later, he denied it again — before finally admitting to it three weeks later.

There is a pattern to the mayor’s behaviour, one that directly contradicts his public persona. What’s more, none of these scandals would have had any impact had the mayor tamed his instinct for petty revenge. In the case of the $444 ticket, it wouldn’t even have seen the light of day.

But Coderre can’t help himself, and sadly political conditions will only further enable his sense of infallibility. For one thing, his poll numbers have hardly budged since his election in 2013, remaining well within the 60 per cent approval sweet spot.

Coderre has the ability to dress up municipal politics — the stuff of garbage collection and snow removal — into something more grand. His Twitter feed is full of Expos regalia and speculation. Bringing back the team has become his unofficial campaign plank for the 2017 municipal election.

Good for him — and good for Montreal, in a way. Successive mayors, from Pierre Bourque to the corrupted tragedy of Gérald Tremblay, have left Montrealers feeling cynical about their municipal leaders. With his outstretched hand and ready smile, Coderre has done much to erase this cynicism.

Like the very voters who put him there, Montreal is happily in his grip. Just remember not to struggle too much … because you don’t want Denis mad at you.

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